Long COVID: Using Private Healthcare Claims to Study Post-COVID Conditions

Post-COVID conditions make up a wide range of health problems that may occur four weeks or more after infection with the virus that causes COVID-19. Post-COVID conditions are known by various terms, including long COVID and post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC). Post-COVID conditions have become an issue of growing national concern, with one expert calling them the “pandemic after the pandemic.” Two recent studies from a national, independent nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing transparency to healthcare costs and health insurance information have used private healthcare claims data to study large numbers of COVID-19 patients for the prevalence and characteristics of post-COVID conditions. The first study identified patients who had a post-COVID condition commonly reported on in the literature 30 days or more after their index date of first diagnosis with COVID-19. At that time, researchers were limited by the lack of a specific ICD-10 diagnosis code for post-COVID conditions. Afterward, such a code (ICD-10 code U09.9) became effective. In the second study, that code was used to bring even greater clarity to the long COVID population. This session will present results and conclusions from both studies and point to next steps in the organization’s research on post-COVID conditions.